


only the sun has come this close (only the sun)

by Wakeywakey_bigmistakey



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Boarding School, Clarke-centric, F/F, Healing, Sad to Tender, more characters and relationships to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 07:57:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey/pseuds/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey
Summary: Clarke has lost so much, she doesn't even know if her life is her own anymore. When her principal tasks her with showing around the new girl, she'd never have guessed how much that'd change things.orClarke is healing. Slowly. Then Lexa enters her life





	1. Chapter 1

“What is it exactly that you want, Clarke?”

Niylah’s voice is soft. Their limbs entangled in the bed, dawn slowly working its way up on the horizon. She looks tentatively up at the other girl, whose chest rises and falls rhythmically. 

Clarke stares at the ceiling. There’s a crack there, one that has been there for longer than she has. Her fingers trace delicate circles on Niylah’s bare shoulder. 

The question hangs in the air. Clarke makes a quiet humming noise, signalling that she is considering. She might not be very good at this, but honesty has always been easy with Niylah. 

“I don’t,” she starts, leaving a long break to articulate what she wants to say. “I don’t really know. There used to be so much, but now I just…” She finally meets the other girl’s gaze, brushing a few stray hairs out of her eyes. 

“I don’t know,” she repeats.

Niylah kisses her forehead gently while sitting up. Jumping down from the bunk, she starts pulling her clothes on. Clarke sits up, pulling the blanket around her body. It suddenly feels more exposed than it had a minute ago. 

She tilts her head in questioning, silently asking why the other girl is leaving.

“Clarke, it’s not that I want a relationship beyond what we already have, but I can’t be your way of escaping yourself. What’s more is I won’t.”

With a quick final kiss, Niylah breezes out of the room. In the silence that follows, it seems like she was never there at all.

-

“Earth to Clarke, are you there?”

Snapping out of the haze she hadn’t even noticed she was in, Clarke looks up to meet two faces looking back at her. Raven takes quick note of the bags under her eyes.

“Everything okay?”

This time, it’s Octavia asking. 

Clarke runs her fingers in a circle across her own thigh, trying to make it feel more material. More  _ there _ . Making sure that her body is still her own. 

“Yeah, just didn’t sleep too well.” Even in her own ears, it doesn’t sound very convincing. She sees the way her friends look at each other, their concerned gazes. She really tries to care. 

None of them bring the subject up again during their lunch and she’s grateful. She doesn’t have the words to describe what she’s feeling, can’t shape a sentence that encapsulates her disconnect from the world.

Instead, she eats in silence and laughs appropriately at jokes. The bell rings out loud over the cafeteria, and the three of them get up with a sigh. 

“Meet up after? I have a feeling I’m about to have a whole lot of shit to talk,” Raven says, rolling her eyes at no one in particular. 

The two other eye her sympathetically. Engineering elective had seemed like the perfect fit for Raven when they were choosing senior year classes, as natural as Clarke choosing art or Octavia choosing physical education. As it turned out, the course was too easy and filled with self-aggrandizing assholes.

“Of course. Send Wick my worst.”

-

The air feels like it’s getting colder by the minute, Clarke’s breath materializing in white puffs of smoke. In hindsight, warmer clothing seems like it might have been a really good idea. 

Continuing down the path she’s beat herself, she pushes a branch to the side and finds her destination easily enough. 

She discovered the little grove a small walk into the woods her freshman year, back when everything was still fresh and hurt. It’s become a sanctuary of sorts, one of the only secrets she’s kept completely to herself while being at the  _ Arkadia Institute _ . 

A tall rock in the center has a small hollow, big enough that she can plomp down and sit in it. Over the years, she’s left a few things next to it; a drawing pad and some pencils, a couple of granola bars, all hidden neatly in a plastic bag next to the rock.

The drawing pad is left mostly untouched, save for a few halfhearted sketches of plants. 

Sitting there, she mostly zones out and thinks back. In the grove, Clarke allows herself to immerge in the memories she usually tries to avoid. The current moment always seems to slip away from her, but hidden between the trees and safely away from the concern of others, she doesn’t have to try and pretend.

Usually, she goes here on the weekends when both Octavia and Raven are away. It’s not too often, as she usually goes with them to visit Bellamy, or is forced to visit her mom. But once in a while, she successfully convinces them both that she has too much homework, or that she needs to catch up on some art and can’t do that if they’re around.

Today she’s really meant to be in art class, but her teacher is starting to catch up on her complete lack of inspiration and she can’t really handle the thought of having to come up with a reason why. 

So, she went here. Now she just have to say she wasn’t feeling too well, and convince either Octavia or Raven to back up her claim that she was in her room the entire time. Which either one of them will happily do, Octavia being an avid class-skipper herself and Raven just not caring if that’s what she wants.

Everything slips away as she zones out, no longer registering neither the cold nor her surroundings. What’s left is what’s always left: faces.

Jake’s is the first. Her father’s face never seems too far away, constantly resting on the brink between conscious and unconscious thought. 

She remembers his laugh the clearest, how it would boom across any room. 

He was so precise about everything, years of being an engineer showing through his exact measures. Any recipe would turn out great if he made it, not through a talent for cooking as much as through his meticulous obedience of the recipe.

It feels like grappling to remember him. Clarke tries so hard to feel the sorrow that she knows she should, the grief of his death or even resentment of his leaving. She just can’t get her body to react with anything but apathy, dull sense of sadness vaguely shining through it.

She tries with Wells’s face next. 

How he was such an awkward, gentle boy. The way she could get him to bend his own principles if only to get her to laugh, or simply because she wanted to and he was chronically unable to tell her no.

His passion for studying, or the pleased look that would settle on his face when he finally understood something difficult. The immense sense of pride he took in his report cards.

Clarke can feel it pull a nerve somewhere in her emotions, but it still feels like someone else’s. Like she’s watching her own life, outer as well as inner, through a looking glass or eyes that aren’t her own.

The grove is where she goes to try emotionally jump-starting herself. There is intense resentment within her of the way she is just watching the weeks and months slip by her in a muted haze.

Clarke doesn’t  _ want  _ this.

She wants with every fiber of her being to feel good, to feel bad, to feel  _ anything _ .

Poking the pain that lives in her stomach seems the most obvious way to achieve this, but it hasn’t worked so far. Increasing the artillery, she continues thinking back.

She  _ knew  _ Wells was in love with her, she knew from a very early age. Played it to her advantage, even, when she wanted him to take part in her more daring schemes. 

She was pretty sure that Wells knew that she knew, but he never did learn how to stand up to her. 

Whenever she thinks of Well’s, she can’t feel anything but guilt at the way she treated him for most of the time. His wide eyes staring at her back when she dated Finn, so upset but always silent. 

Finn.

He’s another one of the faces she keeps bubbling beneath the surface of her memory, perpetually on backburner for every hour that she is awake and appearing again the moment she falls asleep. 

They had been so young, then. He had been so young.

A loud beeping from her pocket jolts her back to the forest, out of the realm of people she knows to have let down. People whose death lies draped across her shoulders.

Class is ending. Clarke has to get back so as not to arouse suspicion. Trotting back the hidden path, she rehearses her excuse, how she’s gonna explain it to her friends and how to frame it when talking to her art teacher.

For some reason, just as she pushes open the heavy oak door that leads into the gothic revival building that makes for the main residential hall of the school, Niylah’s face pops into her mind. She doesn’t make it to considering it further before Raven is standing across from her and ranting about her class.

“And can you  _ believe _ , I mean, the audacity of that little piece of lego under an unsuspecting foot-,” Raven very nearly yells, tone rising for every word spoken. “-that he would even dare to insinuate that it’s  _ my  _ capabilities that aren’t there when  _ he’s  _ the one who can’t even weld two goddamn sheets of metal together without roasting the hair off his balls in the process.”

In the midst of her anger, Raven luckily doesn’t take notice of Clarke entering from the opposite way of her room. 

-

If anyone were to pass the closet in that exact moment, they’d hear the keen pants of Niylah desperately trying not to alert the entire hallway to the fact that she’s coming with Clarkes face between her legs.

They’re both on the drunk side of tipsy. 

Getting up and wiping her mouth, Clarke quickly buttons her shirt again and grabs the door handle while Niylah buttons her jeans. 

Niylah grabs the handle as well, preventing her from opening the door.

“Hey,” she says, turning Clarke to face her in the cramped space. “Leaving already?” Her breathing has yet to settle down.

Clarke eyes her for a moment.

“I still don’t know what I want, Niylah. I like this, but we both know it isn’t what any of us really  _ want _ .”

With that, she turns around and leaves the closet. It had been Niylah who pulled her in there, to her surprise, after they’d split a carton of sour wine. 

The wine is Clarke’s thing. It tastes bad, but it’s her favorite kind of drunk. A little heavy, pensive in a way.

It’s still strumming just beneath her skin when she reaches her bed, foregoing brushing her teeth and getting out of her clothes for the simple pleasure of faceplanting directly onto the mattress.

Her mind spins and she feels drunker than she’s realized until now. The intoxicated talks is a tradition of her and Niylah’s, every once in a while meeting up to split whatever they can get their hands on and just enjoying the honesty that they can share.

It’s funny, Clarke thinks, how it’s the fact that they know so little about each other and each other’s friends that they can be so much more honest than she can with Octavia or Raven. 

The sex is nearly an afterthought at this point, one that she is very surprised has continued after Niylah’s quick departure the last time they did it.

Today it felt more like a goodbye than an afterthought though, both of them knowing that they’ve used each other more as an outlet than as anything else. 

Neither of them has ever had to mention keeping it a secret, the private nature of their bond making up half of the bond itself. 

A quick stab in the chest makes Clarke realize that she’s actually a bit sad to see Niylah go. It takes her by surprise, but a very welcome one.

Drifting off to sleep, she has her first dreamless night in months.

-

Snow has settled softly on the school grounds when Clarke’s called to the principal’s office during math class. Raven and Octavia are both in it, one of the only classes all three of them share, and three pairs of eyes connect in turn. 

Confused as she is, Clarke makes her way down the hallway considering the cause of her abrupt yank from an average day.

Worry gnaws in the deepest pit of her stomach. She’s never been pulled out of a class except for when something terrible has happened. Last time it was Finn, Wells before that, and her father the first time it happened.

Abby’s face flashes before her when she awaits an answer to her knock on the door, guilt steadily bubbling up beneath her skin at the thought. If something has happened, it will have done so after no contact between them for over three months, and a relationship that’s been in shreds for years.

When Kane’s voice welcomes her in, the guilt is flushed out with disbelief. There, in the middle of the dark office and in front of the desk where Kane is sitting, stands Abby. Smiling tentatively at the dumbstruck teen.

“Mom?” she asks once she finally finds a voice to say anything at all. “What are you doing here?”

There’s a sense of surrealism about seeing someone who, in Clarke’s mind, belongs to totally different surroundings, standing there. In the principal’s office. At her school.

Clarke can remember maybe three times total that Abby has visited her school for the three and a half years that she’s been there.

Abby fidgets a bit with the hems of her dress, hands uncharacteristically restless. She opens and shuts her mouth a few times, no words escaping while she tries to word her sentence.

“I’m here to bring you home, for a bit,” she finally says. She smiles again, and it’s still this strange smile that Clarke can’t quite place.

Disbelief is replaced with confusion, Clarke knitting her brows and not knowing what to say.

When the silence stretches into awkwardness, Kane speaks up. “I’ve approved a two week stay off-campus, on two conditions: that you do the homework for the classes that you’ll miss,” his eyes light up as he continues. “And that you have a good time and unwind. I know it’s been a hard couple of years.” 

He blinks and looks at his student, who is still silently staring from Kane to her mom and back again.

“Uhm.” 

It’s the first thing Clarke has said since greeting her mom, and she really doesn’t know how to continue.

“Why didn’t you write first?” she finally says, grasping for anything to say at all.

Abby is looking at her so gently that she has to avert her gaze, instead studying the incredibly ugly pattern of a worn rug on the floor.

“I wanted it to be a surprise. I wrote to ask headmaster Kane last week, and flew down here as soon as he approved.”

Clarke doesn’t have anything to say and her focus keeps returning to the carpet instead of the much more pressing situation unfolding in front of her. 

_ Really  _ though, why would anyone actively pick such a hideous carpet? Clarke’s knowledge of colour schemes and what goes together kind of takes over her mind and she’s still pondering whether the carpet was an active choice or just came with the building or something as she packs up some clothes, as she leaves the school grounds. 

She doesn’t really zone back in until she’s onboard a plane, and she wonders what conversations she’s been a part of without taking particular notice. 

“You’ve been very quiet, Clarke.”

Abby is sitting in the aisle seat, Clarke lodged between her and a snoring woman leaned against the window. 

“Just kind of tired. There’s been a lot of homework recently and you know how bad I am at getting them done before the last minute.”

This pulls a chuckle from Abby.

“Some day, Clarke, you’ll have to learn about time management.” It’s such a typical Abby comment, so recognizable that Clarke remembers her saying the exact same thing in exactly the same fondly exasperated inflection when the teen was still a child. 

It makes the blonde’s skin crawl. Suddenly, it isn’t just an everyday comment. It feels like a dig at everything, an imitation of how close they have been. How close they aren’t anymore. 

She doesn’t say anything, seething in silence. 

Logically, she’s very aware that it isn’t fair. That Abby has tried very hard to reconnect with her and help her through the last couple of years. To Clarke, she just hasn’t changed from the passive shell of a woman she was when Clarke needed her the most.

Jakes death hit them both so hard in it’s unexpected horror, the bottomless grief that seemed like it would never end. Clarke had been a month shy of starting eight grade. Abby coped. She coped through years of not speaking, not smiling, not being  _ there _ .

It was Clarke who found the boarding school, who gave her mom the registration form, Clarke who booked a plane and left. 

And Abby has been trying more recently. Calling, texting, even going as far as to send an actual, honest-to-god letter. Clarke just can’t find it in her to answer anything but brisk, short replies. No details, nothing on what she’s doing. 

The plane nearly jumps from the hard impact of landing, lights flickering on ahead and scattered applause for the captain streaming down the cabin.

-

It takes three days. Three days before she leaves her room except for meals and visits to the bathroom. 

Late at night, she pads down to the kitchen in her pajamas after a shower. Gathering her hair up in a bun, she spots Abby in the living room, hunkered over a pile of paperwork with the hospital logo in the corners. 

Grabbing the apple she’s ventured to the kitchen for, she nearly goes back to her room before deciding against it and heading towards the table her mom is sitting at.

When she pulls out a chair, Abby gasps and slings a hand over her chest in a rather comical series of facial expressions.

“You spooked me!” she exclaims, still keeping the hand on her chest.

Clarke grins. 

“Sorry, wasn’t on purpose.”

Abby returns Clarke’s smile, the calm stretching comfortably throughout the room.

“How are you doing, Clarke? And I mean how are you  _ really  _ doing,” she asks after a solid stretch without any words.

Clarke searches for her usual anger at her mother’s newfound interest in her, or even annoyance, but she doesn’t find any. Mostly, she’s just weary.

“I don’t know, mom,” she says, and for the first time in a long time, she some kind of means it. “I have a really hard time getting my life to feel like it’s  _ mine _ , that it’s happening to  _ me _ , y’know?”

Abby looks at her, and looks at her, and Clarke is waiting for her to launch into some kind of master plan for fixing everything that they both know she will agree to but never follow through on.

Abby’s gaze flickers to the painting hanging behind her daughter and sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

Clarke is left stunned at the uncharacteristic response. Abby looks at her bewildered daughter and lets out a breath of air meant to be a laugh, but never get past an exhale through the nose. There is so much remorse between them.

“When your father died,” she starts, and Clarke looks away. The teen physically can’t force her eyes to meet her mom’s when it’s this topic. “I shut down. I know that you know this, but I have to say it anyway. I couldn’t cope with it, I couldn’t feel anything without the world feeling like it was collapsing all at once, inside my chest.” 

Abby pauses. She reaches across the table and runs a hand down Clarke’s arm. 

Clarke finally gets her gaze to cooperate and she looks up.

“I was a horrible parent for a long time.” She leaves the words hanging there, filling the air in the room. Clarke considers protesting, but they would both know it wasn’t genuine. She’s been saying it herself for years.

“And Clarke, I am more sorry than I can ever convey to you for that. But if there is anything,  _ anything  _ I can do to help you now, I’ll do it. I can’t make it up to you, I’m very aware,” she says, and Clarke notices a few tears making their way down her face. “But I promise you, feeling bad or sad, it’s so much better than feeling nothing.”

Clarke can feel a knot starting to form in her stomach, a lump swelling in her throat. 

“I didn’t think it was. I thought I was protecting myself,” Abby continues. “The thing is though, in the end I wasn’t protecting anything. There was nothing left to protect.”

Without having seen it coming, not really knowing what to do about, Clarke starts crying. At first, it’s just a small hiccup and slightly wet cheeks. 

Once that’s happened, though, it’s like a crack in a dam; bursting open and releasing everything that it held at bay.

That’s how Clarke finds herself bawling for the first time in years. 

-

Once more finding herself in Headmaster Kane’s office, Clarke notices that the carpet is gone. 

The two weeks have passed in relative ease, the tension gone after she spent an entire night crying and talking.

Now she’s here, reporting back to the headmaster as she’d apparently promised on the way out the last time she was here. 

“I’m glad to see you back and well-rested, Clarke,” Kane says, and by the look of his face he genuinely is. 

She carts a hand through her hair, nodding in return.

“Now, I have a task for you that I hope you’re up for. It isn’t any of the requirements for taking your mini-leave even if-” his whole face lights up in a goofy smile. “-I naturally expect you to have followed those as well.”

Clarke nods and if Kane notices how awkward she’s feeling, he doesn’t comment on it. 

“We have a new student arriving next week, and I’d like you to show her the school. Maybe sit with her at lunch, I don’t know… Just make her feel a bit more home, you know?” Kane’s eyebrows knit and he looks at her expectantly.

“Yeah, uh,” she stammers, resisting the strong urge to just give him a thumbs up and leave. That man has an inane ability to feel like an awkward uncle, she thinks. “Sure, I can do that.”

-

Clarke only remembers the fact that she’s supposed to show the new girl around and figure out some way to make arriving at boarding school halfway through the final year feel not-horrible the day before she’s set to arrive, and she asks the only person she can think to: Raven.

“Is this just because I got to the school last, Griffin?” the brunette asks incredulously, folding her face into comically hurt lines.

“That’s exactly what I just said.” 

“Yeah, but,” she continues. “It’s more the way you said it.”

They stare each other down for a moment before Raven pokes Clarke’s side and they both laugh.

“No, but for real though; just sit next to her at lunch and make sure she doesn’t get lost the first three days. That’s probably the most you can do without digging into why the hell you’d start a new school  _ this  _ late in the year, which might not be the best topic for small-talk.”

Clarke nods and makes a mental note of getting the new girl’s schedule from the student office.


	2. Chapter 2

Standing there in her dark navy uniform skirt and the white shirt still bearing the tell-tale creases of the bag it’s delivered in, the new girl is reading plaques in the hallway when Clarke finally finds her.

In the crowd that always precedes the first morning bell, it hasn’t been easy spotting who looks like an  _ Alexandria Woods, brown hair _ which is literally all the info that’s been given to Clarke. 

Now that they’re the only two left, she thinks she maybe should have known. The entire vibe of the other girl is just basically uncertain, from the way she stands to the intent way she studies the little showcase of the school’s successes of the past.

Moving closer, Clarke reaches out a hand and carefully touches Alexandria’s shoulder so as not to startle her. She jolts and makes this tiny noise, a shriek if not for the low, low volume. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Alexandria turns around and composes herself in a matter of seconds. Clarke, meanwhile, can’t help but stare at little at her. She has these delicate features that the artist has to force herself not to focus on. 

“No, I’m the one that should apologize. That reaction was completely unwarranted,” Alexandria says, and Clarke thinks she might be embarrassed. There’s this remarkably subtle blush rising across her cheeks. Clarke’s staring again. She compels herself to pull it together.

“My name is Clarke, and I’m supposed to show you around,” she says. “That’s on the assumption that you are Alexandria Woods, yeah?” she quickly adds, realizing that she completely forgot to ask.

Alexandria nods curtly, but doesn’t say anything further.

“Well,” Clarke starts, walking down the hall towards the exit of the building. “This building houses most of the classrooms, offices, basically all the academic parts of the school.”

Pushing open the heavy door to exit the building, they continue their mini tour across the courtyard.

Clarke keeps looking at Alexandria, who in turn avoids direct eye contact and doesn’t say much of anything at all. Instead, she keeps scanning her surroundings, taking it all in. Clarke can’t really explain how, but she looks wary; suspicious, even, at the places around her.

“And this is the dormitory building, which is where all our rooms are. Do you have your room number yet?” Clarke asks, and Alexandria doesn’t answer. She’s looking down the hall. When she realizes that something has just been said, she tilts her head to have it repeated.

“Do you know your room number?” Clarke asks again, to which Alexandria nods before the question has finished.

Clarke can’t help but wonder what has her so distracted from her own private tour, but Raven’s apprehension from the day before keeps her from asking.

“I’m in 309,” Alexandria says so softly that Clarke nearly misses it. Which is also what makes it take a moment before she smiles and starts resolutely down the hallway. 

“That’s only two doors down from where I live,” she exclaims, unusually happy for it to be so. “I’m in 307.”

The other girl follows, but she’s still not saying anything. Coming to a halt outside her room, Clarke turns and scratches her head.

“So… This is yours.” She can’t help but feel a quick pang of uncertainty. Where to go from here? “As I mentioned before, I’m only two doors down, so just knock if there’s anything. I guess.”

Alexandria looks from her to the door and back again. Neither of them say anything. When the new girl reaches for the door, Clarke notices that she’s trembling very slightly. The room is bare, save for a bed, a closet, and a small desk, courtesy of the school and standard to every room in the residence hall. 

Alexandria is just standing there, staring into the same spot of nothing.

“Do you have any luggage I can help you with?” Clarke asks, if only to say something in the hush that has fallen between them. She eyes the sagging backpack on the other girl’s shoulder, which can’t be more than half-filled. 

Alexandria’s eyes finally move from their spot on the wall, only to lock onto her own feet. It takes such a long moment before she says anything that Clarke is just about to ask again when finally, in a voice just above a murmur, she says, “No, I’m fine.”

Clarke’s halfway back to class before she realizes that it doesn’t seem like anyone was dropping her off.

-

“So, what’s the sitch on the new girl?” Octavia asks before taking a long sip of coffee. Sitting on the little terrace outside the cafeteria, her legs are crossed on the flooring. Clarke, sitting across from her, thinks for a long while.

“I can’t figure her out,” she finally says, thinking back on the long silences that filled most of the week they’d known each other. “She just basically never, like, says anything.”

Lexa hadn’t approached her again until day three, despite her repeated attempts at getting a conversation going. And then it’d only been to ask the way to the library. 

“She looks like it physically hurts to talk to me.” Clarke tries to remember if she’s done anything to provoke this, but she’s been nothing but polite and proper in her, admittedly scarce, communication with Alexandria.

“I mean, that probably makes pretty okay sense in a way,” Octavia states. “It can’t really be all that much fun to start here now.”

Clarke nods her agreement, and considers venting her concern about the new girl’s lack of possessions and apparent lack of guardian. Deciding against it, she instead turns to look over at the lunch queue. They’d only sat down to wait until it dwindled a bit.

Of course she notices Niylah at once, standing in the middle of a group of her friends whom Clarke has only a vague idea about who is who in. Someone says something, apparently funny, to her and she throws her head back laughing.

Clarke aches. It takes her a solid while to realize why, and it’s not that she misses her maybe-friend. It hits her like a brick in the face that she genuinely can’t remember the last time laughed like that. Naturally. Without forcing it. 

Octavia follows her eyes to the queue and sighs loudly. “We’re so gonna make it to eat before class, are we?”

-

“Clarke?”

It takes her a moment to recognize whose voice it is, so when she turns around to answer she’s nearly surprised to find that it’s Alexandria standing there. 

Her hair is done up in a number of small braids crossing each other, an intricate design that Clarke isn’t sure she’s ever seen anyone wear before. It accentuates her features and Clarke has no word for the way she carries herself, except maybe royal. 

Realizing that she still hasn’t answered, she shakes herself out of her stupor. Alexandria doesn’t seem to have noticed and she’s relieved. 

“Ye- yes?” Clarke answers, and she wonders; she’s never stuttered before in her life, not like this. Every word feels so important and she can’t pinpoint why.

“Sorry , it’s just,” the other girl says, biting her lip and considering for a moment. “Do you know what they’re setting up in the field outside the residential building?” The words spoken like a string tumbling out, Alexandria looks mortified to have said anything at all.

Clarke grins. 

Alexandria’s shoulders tighten and her face draws back into a calculated neutral at this. The transformation is quite astonishing, how quickly she dispels every trace of the awkwardness from only moments ago. 

Clarke’s smile fades to nothing. She’s done something wrong. She can physically feel the misstep, but can’t make out its shape. Running a hand through her hair, she clears her throat. 

“Yeah, uhm, it’s the school’s annual festival.”

Alexandria tilts her head questioningly, so Clarke continues. “It’s like two days with a thing between carnival and medieval fair. It’s been a school tradition for, like, forever.”

“So, is this soon then?”

“Yeah, I think it’s next week maybe. Have you really not been told about this? Kane usually won’t shut up about it.”

“No, I-” Alexandria’s voice lowers a bit, and with the way her eyes drop it’s clear that it’s maybe a sore subject “-I don’t really know who would tell me. I might have slightly exaggerated how well-adjusted I’ve become at my last meeting with Headmaster Kane, and I don’t really know who else would tell me.”

When she pauses, she meets Clarke eyes. This time, there’s nothing rambling about the way she speaks and the words are measured and exact. 

“Would you mind accompanying me, Clarke?” she asks matter-of-factly, and there’s no hint of emotion in her request. “I’d rather not have to go on my own.”

\--

Something feels like it’s unravelling in the deepest pit of her chest. Lately she’s felt more, not really more of anything as much as just  _ more _ . But now it’s two in the morning and she’s sitting on her floor.

Clarke suppresses the need to vomit only to burst into violent tears. It feels like the thread her mother had pulled loose when she was home last has trailed behind her ever since, disentangling the knot in her stomach that she’s carried since forever.

The thread has run out, though, and it hasn’t hidden anything; hitting just as she’s heading to bed. 

Jake, Wells, Finn. Gone. The haze has vanished and their absence is slashing into her like knives. The pain has never been as bare. 

She’s never, ever going to see any of them again. The full implication of that is searing itself into her brain and she doesn’t know why it’s hitting her so many years later, but it feels acute and, most of all, fresher than on the days of their funerals.

Her heart has burgeoned back alive and it’s  _ aching _ for them. For her father to hold her tight and tell her that it will be okay. For Wells to look at her with the tenderness of someone who has known her for her entire life. For Finn, with his clumsy, hungry hands and his lighthearted kindness.

Clarke is full on sobbing and the act of pulling air into her lungs is a cruel reminder. She’s alive and they’re not, and it’s just so cosmically unfair that the guilt feels like it might be physically worming its way up her throat to strangle her.

When the lock turns loudly, the panic crashing into her chest overshadows everything else for a moment. She has no intention of explaining anything to anyone, and she’s not so sure she would know how even if she was willing to.

A brunette head pokes in the door, and for the shortest moment Clarke thinks it’s Alexandria. Once the person steps into the room though, it quickly becomes obvious that it’s really Octavia, though.

“Are you crying?”

Clarke is mortified. Octavia might be the toughest person she knows and they very definitely do not cry in front of each other. Never have.

The tears still spring defiantly when she tries to wipe them away, to lock them back in. Now that she’s opened the floodgates, she can’t force it shut.

There’s no way to convince Octavia that what’øs happening isn’t and she can’t speak.

Octavia looks at her steadily in the darkness. The way she looks so small, folded in to herself. Taking a step closer, then two, the brunette sits down next to her. 

The arm placing itself over her shoulder shocks Clarke through her fit, especially when another one wraps over her bent knees so that the other girl is hugging her. Not very tightly, but that’s a good thing for the moment. 

“If you want to talk about it, I’m always here,” Octavia murmurs, and it pulls a new bout of sobs from Clarke. 

They sit there for a long time, Octavia not letting up or complaining about the discomfort of their position once. 

“They’re,” Clarke finally force out. “They’re never coming back.” 

In the complete stillness of obscure night, she wants someone to know. To understand the vacuum of her life. 

It’s quiet.

“When my mom died,” Octavia starts. “I still set the table for three. For a very long time.”

None of them say anything, letting the statement fill the air.

“I thought that if I kept pretending she would come home, then maybe she would. Or at least she wouldn’t, wherever she was, think that I’d forgotten about her.”

There’s a pragmatic tone to her voice as she says it, the voice of someone who has dealt with something and moved past it. Clarke envies her that, more than anything in the world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a short one, sorry. I'm going to be quite busy the next while, so I wanted to post this beforehand

There is a strange calmness in Clarke’s chest the morning after her breakdown. It’s not exactly happiness, not really even close, but it’s also a far cry from the hollow emptiness she has carried around for so long. The walls don’t seem to be closing in on her anymore.

Octavia is next to her, snoring away quietly. They both fell asleep the night before, Octavia not leaving her side. Clarke is grateful. It’s the first time she’s had this kind of connection with the slightly younger girl. 

Getting up without waking her is easy enough, Octavia is still Octavia and so she has stayed on the other side of the bed from Clarke. An impressive feat, considering how tiny the school-issued beds are. 

Clicking the door shut behind her, Clarke turns around just in time to crash head-first into something.  _ Someone _ .

“I apologize,” Alexandria says after regaining her bearings. “I should have made my presence known.”

Clarke wonders why she speaks like that, so prim and proper. The courteousness leaves her feeling like she has wronged the other girl somehow, like she’s mad at some unspoken infraction.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I was going to ask you,” Alexandria says before trailing off. She shifts her weight back and forth and her eyes dart everywhere but Clarke’s. “Doyouwanttoeatbreakfastwithme?”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that last part,” Clarke says. This rambling, nervous side of Alexandria interests her, how it materializes seemingly out of nowhere and can disappear just as fast. 

“Do you,” Alexandria repeats, taking a deep breath and forcefully slowing down her speech, “want to have breakfast with me?”

Clarke has to force herself not to laugh at how simple the request turns out to be. She still remembers how quickly the other girl hardened up and shut her out the last time she did so. And as if on queue, her stomach growls loudly.

“I’d love to.”

\---

They decide to sit outside in the misty morning light. The air is crisp and soon, it will be too cold to sit there without multiple layers of clothes. As it is, they both shiver slightly and keep their hands mostly on their warm cups.

Clarke studies Alexandria. It’s a habit she’s noticed that she can’t really quit, not whenever the other girl is near. 

“I’m sorry if I’ve imposed on your saturday morning, Clarke.” The way she pronounces Clarke’s name,  _ Klark _ , leaves the blonde wondering if it’s an Alexandria thing or if it might be the slightest hint of an accent.

She smiles, the softest upwards curve in the dim morning. “Don’t worry about it, Alexandria. I like spending time with you.” She hadn’t meant to say it or known she meant it, but she knows it’s true the moment it passes her lips. 

Alexandria tries to hide that she’s smiling too by taking a sip of her coffee, but Clarke notices. She’s not sure she would have if she could tear her gaze away from Alexandria’s face, but that’s neither here nor there.

They chat away about nothing, Clarke saying a lot and Alexandria listening. It’s mostly about school, about the upcoming festival, about the things Clarke wants for christmas when that time comes.

“How about you, what do you want for christmas?” Clarke figures it’s an innocent enough question, but something passes over Alexandria’s face. Something she can’t quite put a name to. It’s gone in an instant, but it feels forced. Like she’s schooled her face out of showing whatever emotion  _ that  _ was.

“A sweater,” Alexandria finally says. There’s this slight look of yearning in her eyes. “A mossy green sweater.”

Clarke once again finds herself nearly laughing, but she doesn’t. Instead, she can’t physically tear her eyes away from the other girl’s. There is this slight blush rising across her cheeks, her every breath a puff of white smoke. The tip of her nose is turning red.

She looks positively adorable, a little disheveled and just a bit in awe of something unspoken. 

Clarke wonders why she can’t look away. As it turns out, she very much can when Alexandria turns to look at her and notices that she’s staring. 

She gets up. “I have some reading to catch up on. See you around.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you around, Alexandria,” Clarke replies, and she wonders just when she turned into a bumbling mess.

The other girl is halfway across the wooden terrace when she turns around. “My friends call me Lexa,” she calls over the empty platform, leaving without another word. 

Clarke feels her heart skip a beat.  _ Lexa _ . She tastes the word, the way it feels. The way it sounds. “Lexa.” Lexa,  _ Lexa,  _ Lex-a.  _ Friend _ .

\--

“Raven, why are you staring at me?” Clarke asks. Her friend haven’t looked away in a long time, and she can’t decode the look in her eyes.

Raven just continues looking at her with this enigmatic smile, an eyebrow slightly quirked.

“Raven, seriously.”

“You seem happier,” she just says.

“What do you mean?” and she knows, but she doesn’t know what Raven knows.

“Clarke, you,” and she pauses for a moment, considering. “You haven’t seemed happy in a very long time.”

Clarke wants to correct her, wants to tell her that she isn’t happy, not quite, but she feels like she might be getting there. She doesn’t.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the new girl, would it?” Raven asks, and it’s a bit too close to home for comfort. Clarke doesn’t want to explain what she doesn’t understand herself. 

“Lexa has a name, Raven, and no.”

Raven just grins at her. 

\---

The week passes slowly. She doesn’t see Lexa except in passing, always on her own. She can’t exactly put her finger to what she’s feeling, just that she’s started drawing in art class again. 

First it’s trees. They’re sad trees, if she’s being honest. Without leaves, crooked trees with contorted branches. They don’t make it past the stage of sketches. Then, Clarke stumbles upon this very distinctive green colour that she can’t take her eyes off of.

Suddenly, she’s in the middle of this painting of a weeping willow and all of the sadness has left the canvas. She can feel the eyes of her art teacher on her back, but she focuses on the painting. She doesn’t want whatever it is that has struck her to leave before she’s through with this.

Clarke feels so much at home behind the canvas and she can’t remember the last time it felt like this, like it used to. Before everything.

\---

The weekend of the festival rolls around. Raven only smirks at her when she says that she can’t join her and Octavia in their tradition of getting drunk and going into the sword-fighting ring. That she has plans with Lexa. 

When she turns to leave them, Octavia eyes Raven. “ _ Lexa _ ?” she asks silently.

“New girl,” Raven answers just as quietly. 

Clarke pretends she doesn’t hear either of them. Even though there isn’t anything furtive about their friendship, it feels private. 

Heading for Lexa’s room, Clarke knocks and waits outside. The bond they’ve established is still on the polite side of private. There is inside the blonde an immense longing to figure the other girl out, to get to the bottom of her as a person. She wants to know her. Really know her.

When Lexa opens the door, Clarke’s heart stops. She’s wearing a costume. They’re all wearing costumes, but Lexa’s is… It’s breathtaking, if Clarke’s being honest. 

She’s wearing an honest-to-god pauldron, strapped across this long, dark coat. But what Clarke really can’t stop focusing on is the  _ war paint  _ she’s made. A simple wide line of dark grey-ish across her eyes, with claw-like drops down her cheekbones. 

She looks stunning.

Lexa looks at Clarke’s attire, a simple tunic that the school provides everyone who don’t feel the need to do anything else with their costume. The rule remains though, everyone must be dressed up for the occasion.

Clarke usually finds it somewhat cringeworthy. She decides right then and there that it’s a good rule, a fantastic rule. 

“Am I overdressed?” Lexa asks with the tiniest tremor in her voice.

Clarke looks at her, confounded. “Lexa, I don’t think  _ anyone  _ would find your outfit anything other than completely awesome,” she says, holding Lexa’s gaze for emphasis.

When they join the festivities, Clarke is happy to point out to Lexa that all the stares she is receiving contains nothing but admiration. She is gifted with hearing Lexa’s laugh for the first time when she points out that there are more than a few staring at her with more than  _ just  _ admiration.

“Who would have guessed that being openly queer is more easily accepted in a boarding school of all places than in general society?”

Clarke stares at her for a few seconds, completely dumbfounded. Then, she breaks her own no-laughing-at-Lexa rule. “Lexa, have you seen any queer media, like,  _ ever _ ?” 

The brunette doesn’t look like she understands the joke. That  _ something  _ that Clarke has seen cross her face once before, the something that feels familiar in all the wrong ways, cross Lexa’s face again.

“It’s just that you couldn’t come up with a more stereotypically queer place if you tried,” Clarke explains, and Lexa’s face folds back into one that is somewhat at ease.

Actually, it might be something a bit different from at ease, Clarke realizes. Not very different, just a smidge in the direction of something relaxed. Something unwinded. 

They approach the sword-ring. It’s not real swords, which Clarke quietly thanks any and every creator god for when she notices that Raven and Octavia has clearly arrived and been there for some time. If there’s one thing that can always surprise Clarke, it’s how fast those two can manage to drink each other under the table.

Raven stumbles forward while spewing a loud “huzzah!” and jabbing Octavia in the leg with the soft tip of the rubbery swords. Octavia who dramatically clutches the leg, screaming bloody murder about how she’ll  _ avenge the unjustness thrust upon her by this scoundrel _ . No one has the heart to tell her that she sounds more like a pirate than a knight.

“Your friends really care about this,” Lexa mention from their place outside the ring. 

Clarke looks over her shoulder before confiding that “More accurately, they’re huge nerds drunk off their ass.”

As if called by Clarke’s less than flattering name for them, Raven sees the two other girls standing there. The blonde heaves a sigh when Raven plucks a flower from a decoration next to her and falls to her knees.

“Fair maiden, I bestch-, best-, bestow this rose on thee,” Raven proclaims loudly, hiccupping her way through. 

Lexa has to hide what Clarke suspects to be a grin behind her hand at the spectacle. 

Octavia sticks out her tongue at all of them. “Spoilsports!” She yells it just before drawing her sword and, with an audible  _ smack _ , sending Raven to the ground with a blow to the ribs. 

Raven looks up at her with wide eyes before grabbing onto her legs, howling that two can play  _ that game, Octavia _ !

Clarke and Lexa withdraws from the scene, opting to stroll through the extravagant tents and stands. The school really has gone all out.

They reach the far end, the one that borders on the woods. 

“Clarke?” Lexa asks, gently touching her hand to get her attention. Clarke hadn’t realized that her mind had trailed off, way into the woods and her hiding spot. 

Her hand burns where Lexa has touched her.


End file.
